Inheritance, Part One
by Christopher Paolini
Summary: Eragon lives a simple life with his father and brother until he finds something during a hunt. Things change for the worse.
1. Interception

**Eragon**

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_Dedicated to Angela. You'll never know how important you are to me._

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_Prologue: Interception_

"Failure is unacceptable."

"Understood," replied the Shade, making sure to keep his expression calm and noncommittal as the image in his mirror slowly morphed back into his own reflection. As soon as he was sure he could only see his own pale white face and maroon eyes glaring back at himself, he slipped the small mirror into his belt and cursed under his breath. The old fool demanded a flawless victory in the upcoming mission, and yet had assigned twelve incompetent barbarians to the task. And if the old fool was so worried about everything, why didn't he bother to come out and do things himself?

The Shade scowled and glanced behind him at his twelve subordinates, shifting around in their makeshift armor made of scrap iron and strips of leather, carrying worn and dull swords. To avoid identification, no official soldiers could be used in the mission, and so the Shade found himself stuck with hired mercenaries, chosen from the ranks of raiders and brigands, the scum of the mountains…but then again, all humans were scum. The Shade slowly slipped through the underbrush quietly, thanks to his lack of armor, eventually reaching the edge of the vegetation to find a small dirt path. He stopped, and raised his head slightly to sniff the air. He could smell the targets already.

So the spies had been right after all…The Shade had been skeptical. He glanced back at his underlings to hiss his final orders. "Fan out. We ambush them as they pass."

The raiders obeyed, groping blindly in the shadows of the trees as they tried to find suitable ambush positions. The Shade, however, saw perfectly fine with the faint moonlight seeping through the leaves above. Darkness was his element, and within it he was completely undetectable, slipping into position behind a thick tree without making a sound. He drew his sword at last, a long, thin blade, bearing a wire-thin scratch down its length.

Though the scent lingered in the air, no further sound came down the path. The target was still some distance away. That was fine. The Shade had long since mastered self-control, and suppressed his impatience. He made sure that his subordinates were ready as well, and went over all the information he had over again, making sure it all made sense.

When he had begun his hunt, the Shade thought he would have been looking for a large group of spell casters, and when the spies had told him the true method of transportation, he had refused to believe it at first. Now, he saw it all made sense. Teleportation was unfeasible. No amount of casters would be able to send the package such a distance with the necessary accuracy. Physical delivery by courier would be the surest way…and the fewer couriers, the less attention drawn, and the greater chance of success of the delivery.

The downside being, of course, that if discovered, they would be understaffed and easily intercepted.

A gentle breeze interrupted his reflection. The scent was stronger this time. His whole body began vibrating, and he gripped his sword ever tighter. "Get ready."

And there they were. Three horses, bearing the three couriers, cantered in single file down the dirt path.

The riders were lightly armed. For them, mobility and stealth were far more important than offensive power. Combat was the last resort. On the first horse was an elf with a slim build, wearing light and flexible armor, a sheathed short sword at each side of his belt, betraying his fighting style as close-ranged and relying on mobility. The last horse bore a heavier rider, an elf armed with a long spear and wearing chainmail and a helm.

These two guards, however, barely caught the Shade's notice. His gaze was fixed on the rider between them, a dark-haired elven woman wearing light armor akin to the first rider's, though her only weapons were a small bow and a sword on her back. In her lap was a small pouch, which she gently stroked with her hand, in order to constantly reassure herself it was still there. As the entourage made its way further and further toward the Shade's position, she whispered something to her two companions. In response, the heavier rider readied his spear and made his way to the front of the line, but nevertheless the three eventually passed the Shade's tree without any other indication of suspicion.

The Shade raised his sword up to his face and closed his eyes, forcing his heartbeat to slow. Just a few more seconds, and then…

His eyes snapped open as he felt the wind change. The breeze now moved toward the elves, and the horses snorted with alarm as they smelled the mercenaries. The riders stiffened and fought to control their mounts, desperately trying to turn around and escape before it was too late.

Only it was already too late for the front two riders. With inhuman speed, the Shade whirled around the tree and waved his hand, causing the two horses to suddenly collapse. Before the elves could rise from their fallen steeds, the mercenaries had leapt from their hiding spaces and descended upon them, hacking away at them and the horses, sending flecks of blood flying as their swords danced up and down.

The Shade ignored the mess as he turned his attention to the final rider, who had mastered her horse and was preparing to gallop away. She glanced back, and suddenly let out a cry at the sight of her fallen comrades, slowing her ride down for an instant as she hesitated.

That hesitation was enough. The Shade raised his hand and aimed his finger at her. A red bolt flashed from the tip of his finger and struck the confused horse, which collapsed without even a squeal. Abandoning her steed, the woman clutched the package to the chest and ran into the trees, seeking refuge in the shadows of the trees.

The Shade laughed. It was futile. He had prepared for such a possibility. As he sheathed his still unused sword, he raised his other hand and snapped his fingers. A ring nearly a half-mile across suddenly exploded into flames, creating the perfect barrier to keep the poor elf trapped. Without turning back to his subordinates, he gave his orders. "Find her. Take her alive, and I'll let you have fun with her before I take custody of her."

The promise had the desired effect, and the twelve raiders raised their swords and charged into the forest, roaring primitive battle cries. Fools; making such noise would merely warn the woman of their positions. It didn't matter, thought the Shade as he casually strolled down the dirt path, waiting.

He heard what he was waiting for within the minute: a death cry. It was followed by another, and the Shade immediately ran toward the source with inhuman speed, drawing his sword in order to hack away at any vegetation in his path. His eyes blinked uncomfortably at the intense light as he moved closer and closer to the edge of the ring of fire.

And there she was, standing right at the edge murmuring desperate words under her breath as she tried to extinguish the flames. In one hand she clutched the package, while in the other was her sword, red with the blood of her victims, two raiders that lay sprawled on the ground in pools of mud and blood. The Shade smiled and remained silent, savoring his victory and laughing inside as spell after spell failed to quench the wall of fire.

"It's hopeless," he said at last. "You're not strong enough to beat me."

The woman whirled around, sword at the ready, and clutched the pouch to her chest ever tighter. The Shade took a step forward, and she took a step back. The Shade stepped forward again, but she remained still, feeling the intense heat behind her that trapped her with her opponent. As she studied her enemy, her sword slowly shook as her arm tired. She quickly glanced behind her.

"Go ahead and burn yourself to death," he said, realizing what she was considering. "It will survive the fire, and I will merely collect it from your ashes. There's nothing that you can…"

He was interrupted by her sword, which flew through the air at him. With a grunt of surprise and anger, the Shade parried the thrown sword with his own, sending it flying away to embed itself into a nearby tree, quivering. "How rude!"

But she wasn't listening; she was using her bought time as best she could, pulling a blue object from the pouch and holding it above her head with both hands, desperately chanting under her breath.

The Shade realized what she was doing, and threw his own sword at her. He missed his mark, piercing her lung instead of her heart. She staggered at the blow, but remained standing as a flash of green light burst from her hands, consuming the large blue stone. The stone vanished with the light. As it did, her arms fell to her sides and she gave the Shade a proud and defiant smile, which remained even as she fell to her knees before finally slumping down unconscious on the ground.

The Shade did his best to remain calm, even as the realization of his failure slowly crept through him. He restrained himself, suppressing his growing rage, in order to think logically. It had been an act of desperation. She merely tried to send it anywhere that wasn't here, and with only her own strength, it couldn't be any more than a few miles away. This was a minor inconvenience, nothing more.

Yes, somehow spending maybe a week searching all over the wilderness for such a small object was only a minor inconvenience, but he needed to believe it, lest he lose control of his temper, which he could not allow at a crucial time like this.

After retrieving his sword from the woman's body, he threw her body over his shoulder and quenched the fire in his path with a wave of his sword hand. Afterwards, he raised the blade of his sword to his mouth, and licked away some of the blood as he made his way through the opening. The ring of fire closed behind him as soon as he had passed, and soon the ring began to slowly spread inward, becoming a complete and all-consuming circle of fire as the sound of the abandoned raiders' pained and panicked voices spread through the air.

Even in this situation, the Shade managed to smile and take some small satisfaction in the smells and sounds of burning trash.


	2. Discovery

_Discovery_

Eragon thought he saw smoke coming from one of the forests off in the distance. Though he had the curiosity of any boy of fifteen, he restrained himself, knowing he didn't have the time to explore. His father, Garrow, had told him to come straight home within three days, no matter how the hunt went. Eragon knew that if he didn't, Garrow might send Roran, Eragon's elder brother, out looking for him, or maybe even go out himself. Those two hated going out into the wilderness of the Spine, the northwest frontier of the Empire, and Eragon had no intention of forcing his father or brother to go through such an ordeal. Indeed, part of the reason Eragon was even allowed to hunt alone was his timeliness, and returning home late this time could mean the end to these solitary adventures.

As such, he quickened his pace along the small path heading back toward the nearest village, Carvanhall. Honestly, Eragon thought it a bit strange that there was a path at all. He couldn't think of anyone besides himself that traveled this far out into the wilderness, not even raiders, though according to the maps he had seen the Empire still considered the Spine important enough to claim it as a part of it. Well, since there wasn't anyone actually living in the Spine, there wasn't anyone to contest the claim.

But if there were no one living in the wilderness, what was this other smoke emerging from the forest beside him?

Eragon paused and looked into the gray slowly seeping and flowing around the green. Unlike the smoke he had seen before, which had been miles away in a distant forest, this smoke seemed only a few steps away. Well, he could certainly spare the few moments to investigate. Drawing the hunting knife from his belt, he cut his way through the vegetation, slowed down by the pack and hunting bow and quiver of arrows on his back, until suddenly, the vegetation suddenly stopped.

A sphere had been carved out in the midst of the trees and shrubs, the edges of the sphere made up of the black and smoldering ends of wood and branches. For a few moments, Eragon stared at the black edges, watching the smoke, before turning his attention to what lay at the center.

At the center, amidst branches that had had their lower sections severed by the sphere of emptiness, was a single polished blue stone, roughly the length of Eragon's forearm. It was certainly not what Eragon had been expecting, but then, what had he been expecting? He approached and nudged the stone with his knife. Nothing happened.

Taking note of the thickness of the black bands, Eragon decided that the wood had been burning for a while, and the stone, by extension, likely had been there a while. He cautiously extended his hand and felt the air around the stone. He touched it with a finger, finding it cold. Then he picked it up.

The stone was round, almost like an egg, though Eragon knew that there was no living creature large enough to produce an egg this size. It was colored a deep blue, except for cloud-like swirls of white. Or perhaps it was the other way around, with blue swirled on white. Either way, it was beautiful.

Eragon looked around him, a pointless gesture of course. Should he keep it? Where had this stone come from? How had it come? Certainly something like this could only have happened by some magic or sorcery or something. Perhaps this very stone was magical then? If that were the case, perhaps the smartest thing to do would be to leave the stone behind and return to the path, forgetting what he had found. Yes, that was certainly what he should do.

Why then, was he already on the path, walking home with the stone in his arms?

By the time he had reached the Anora River, and could see Carvahall and all of Palancar Valley unfold before him, Eragon had finally composed a proper justification for keeping the stone. He had failed to secure any meat for his family from the hunt, but with the stone, he wouldn't be returning empty-handed. The stone would also certainly be worth some money as well, and he could probably find a buyer from the traders of the caravan currently making its way through the valley.

Actually, perhaps he could try to find a buyer from a local merchant, but Eragon decided that the sun was already low enough in the sky. He stowed the stone away into his pack, and slowly made his way to the village, thinking to himself how annoying it was that Garrow insisted living so far from the village itself. As he passed through the wooden houses and shacks of the village, he gave a few polite smiles and waves to the few villages he recognized. Most returned the smile, but one, Brom, an old storyteller that usually kept to himself, merely shooed Eragon away with a wave of the hand.

Eragon didn't let it bother him. He knew the strange old man well enough, as Garrow occasionally met with Brom, and over the years Eragon had gotten used to the old man's eccentricities. Chief among said eccentricities was Brom's appearance. He was usually dressed in bare and minimalist black and brown that almost resembled armor in its appearance, and wore his beard short, which, coupled with the strands of black amidst the white hair, made him appear somewhat younger and more lively than most of Carvahall's elders, who wore their beards long.

As Eragon finally passed through the village and headed south to where his father's house was, he found himself thinking about Brom again. Why exactly did Garrow see the old man again? When Eragon had asked his father about Brom, Garrow merely mentioned that his elder brother Manna had been a close friend of Brom's, which did not really answer the question of course.

Just as Carvahall vanished on the horizon behind him, Eragon found him pretty much at home now, with his house and barn near the center of the cultivated fields. Due to their near isolation, they lay claim to pretty much all the land as far as they could see, and they were only limited by the fact there were only three of them to farm the land. They weren't poor by any means, but they weren't exactly rich. Eragon honestly didn't care that much. Home was home.

The sun was starting to set, which meant his father and brother would be in bed soon if he didn't hurry. Eragon ran the last few steps to the house and knocked on the door.

"You're late," said a gruff voice from the other side of the door.

"Father, I came back as quickly as I could," replied Eragon.

The door swung inward, revealing Garrow's worn face, partially obscured by a small short gray beard. "I know you did, but you had Roran and me worrying."

As Eragon stepped inside, he glanced around. "Then where is Roran anyways?"

"Your brother had a long day. He went to bed early. Fell asleep the moment he set his head down on his pillow." He glanced at Eragon's pack. "I see you weren't able get any meat from your hunt."

"Unfortunately not," said Eragon, setting down and hanging his gear in their appropriate spots. He turned his attention back to his pack. "However, I didn't come back empty handed." He removed the stone from the pack.

Garrow's eyebrows rose. "What is this?"

"I found it in the Spine." He set the stone on the table. "We can probably sell it to one of the traders before the caravans leave."

Garrow swallowed, but Eragon did not hear it. For a few moments, Garrow stared at the stone, and then he looked over at Eragon, only just noticing how old his adopted son was becoming. He cleared his throat. "Eragon, just how far into the Spine did you go? You know how I feel about you travelling to far away from here."

Eragon blinked. "I did go a little further into the wilderness than I usually do, but not that much. Besides, I'm nearly sixteen now. You don't need to worry about me."

Garrow sighed and lowered his head. "Nearly sixteen…almost a man, right?" He took a seat at the table. "Roran mentioned that he was thinking about a job offer at Therinsford he received"

"Wait, what?" Roran was leaving?

"Have a seat." Garrow set his head on his hands for a moment as Eragon obeyed. He took a few deep breaths before continuing. "There's something that I've put off telling you for a while now. Now that you've almost reached manhood…now would probably be a good time."


End file.
